He’s got an outstanding record as governor. If you look at the sessions that are going through right now, Texas will balance the budget without a tax increase…and that’s all to the governor’s credit. In a Republican primary he would be strong both on the economic and social issues.

New York Republican Country Committee Chairman Daniel W. Issacs agrees:

Governor Perry is the perfect example that we in New York should be looking to. At a time when New York ranks at or near the bottom among states in every important metric, Texas is leading the way. By focusing on keeping taxes low and fostering a fair legal and regulatory environment, Governor Perry has helped Texas attract business and residents at a time when New York has been hemorrhaging both.

He has a real Reaganesque personality about him. He’s so relaxed, he’s such a great communicator. He is really one of the most dynamic leaders that we’ve seen on a national level.

Pamela Tucker is deputy speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives. She is confident that Perry will do well in the home of “Live Free or Die”:

He’s a personable man, who speaks well on issues, is easy to talk to. He has a great, strong message about job creation.”

What Critics Say. Perry has picked up his share of critics over his career. Harold Cook, a Democratic Party strategist, first met Perry when both were Democrats back in 1989. Cook now says of Perry:

For the most part he’s unencumbered by conscience. That’s a real luxury. If you aren’t worried about the right policy, all that’s left is for your political director to tell you what’s unpopular. We who are involved in Texas politics are all just props in Rick Perry’s movie. When his priorities are just picked out of a hat based on what Republican primary voters want, we’re bit players.

We’re not creating a system that educates [Texans] well and prepares them. We underinvest in these things, which is what Perry is doing in public education and higher education. We can create the jobs, and that’s great. But our own people who have gone through Texas schools and Texas universities aren’t the ones filling them.

The event suggests that Perry, a man of considerable confidence, is not accustomed to operating on a national, rather than Texan, stage. One of his key problems is the degree to which he can expand beyond a base of Christian conservative supporters. This will make the task somewhat more difficult.

C. Welton Gaddy, a Baptist minister and president of the Washington, DC-based Interfaith Alliance, had strong words for Perry:

I want to be clear that my criticism of the governor doesn’t stem from my lack of appreciation for religion, rather it comes from my deep respect for religion and from not wanting religion to be prostituted for political purposes. I think the people of Texas elected him to be the governor of the state, not the pastor of the state.

Stories You Will Hear More About. Perry grew up in Paint Creek,Texas, which veteran Texas Monthly writer Paul Burka says is in “the middle of nowhere.” It is fifty-four miles north of Abilene, which in turn is 180 miles west of Dallas. Paint Creek is an “unincorporated area” rather than a town, and yes, it is named after a stream.

Perry was a member of Texas A&M’s Corps of Cadets. In case you didn’t know this already, Texas A&M is one of only six universities not run by the federal government with a full-time Corps of Cadets program. (Virginia Tech, North Georgia College and State University, Norwich University, The Citadel, and Virginia Military Institute are the other five). Cadets wear uniforms, go through military training, and can be commissioned in all branches of military service. (Reveille is the highest ranking member of the Corps of Cadets; she is a Five-Star General.)

It saddens me, sometimes, when my fellow Republicans duck and cover in the face of pressure from the left. Our loudest opponents on the left are never going to like us, so let’s quit trying to curry favor with them.

The Republican Party is better suited for…values that I believe in: fiscal conservatism, pro-life, pro-national defense. If you don’t believe in those, then, sorry, I’m not going to compromise my values. Some people see that as partisan. I don’t.

Perry explains his model for Texas’s success—an approach to governing that he will likely brand as his own approach for pulling the entire country out of economic decline:

By balancing our budget without raising taxes, Texas once again will stand in stark contrast to states that choose to burden their residents with higher taxes and onerous regulatory mandates. We’re doing it exactly the way we said we would by prioritizing, cutting spending, and tightening our belts.

The Campaign Book. In Fed Up!: Our Fight to Save America from Washington, which ironically has a foreword written by fellow GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, Perry rails against the federal government’s burdensome tax and regulatory policies. He argues that America’s greatness lies with “how many great things people do in spite of their government.”

Foreign Policy Views. In Fed Up!, Perry lays out a world view that may remind some people of George W. Bush:

We are now confronted with the rise of new economic and military powerhouses in China and India, as well as a Russia that is increasingly aggressive and troublesome to its neighbors and former satellite nations that are struggling to maintain their relatively newfound independence. There is no reason to believe that armed conflict with any major power is imminent, but the world is rapidly changing, and the United States must be prepared for the ramifications of shifting balances of power.

North Korea and Iran, in contrast, are utterly unpredictable and present an imminent threat with their nuclear ambitions…Leftists in Latin America are threatening democracy, and Hugo Chavez is harboring communist rebels in Venezuela. All of these issues require our attention and investment in defense capabilities.

Fed Up! doesn’t say much in the way of specifics about what Perry would do about these threats.

Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy‘s “The Cable” spoke with a foreign policy adviser familiar with Rick Perry who said that Perry’s foreign policy will be “hawk internationalist,” and that “he has no sympathy for the neo-isolationist impulses emanating from some quarters of the Republican Party.”

President Obama’s speech…continues a misguided policy of alienating our traditional allies, in this case Israel, one of our strongest partners in the war on terror. As someone who has visited Israel numerous times, I know that it is impracticable to revert to the 1967 lines. President Obama is asking our Israeli friends to give up too much security and territory as a prelude to a renewed peace process.

Perry has spoken more about foreign policy in recent months. In June, he criticized organizers of a flotilla seeking to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, he wrote:

As an American citizen and governor of one of its largest states, I write to applaud your recent efforts to warn and discourage those who have supported or plan to support a flotilla intended to interfere with Israel’s maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip.

He added:

More importantly, I write to encourage you to aggressively pursue all available legal remedies to enjoin and prevent these illegal actions, and to prosecute any who may elect to engage in them in spite of your preemptive efforts.

On July 12, just two days after the White House announced that it planned to withhold $800 million in aid money from Pakistan, Perry met with former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. The two chatted about ways to improve the Pakistani economy as well as the fraught Pakistani-American relationship. Musharraf had requested the meeting in order to “exchange notes” about Texas’s economic success and ways to translate that success to Pakistan.

I think we have to use every aspect of law enforcement that we have, including the military. Any means that we can [use] to run these people off our border and to save Americans’ lives, we need to be engaged in.

What I learned in my 20’s traveling the globe as an Air Force pilot, our current president has yet to acknowledge in his 50’s—that we are the most exceptional nation on the face of the earth.

Target Audience. Perry hopes to appeal to all three wings of the GOP: fiscal conservatives, national security conservatives, and social conservatives. His main rival for the votes of fiscal and social conservatives looks to be Michele Bachmann. She has an initial edge over Perry when it comes to wooing voters in Iowa, where the first nominating event will be held—she was born there, lives in the state next door, and has been campaigning across the state for months. Perry’s main rival in making the claim to being the most electable general election candidate looks to be Mitt Romney, who has the home field advantage in the second nominating event, New Hampshire. Romney was the governor of the neighboring state of Massachusetts, and he owns a vacation house in New Hampshire. Should Perry hold his own in both Iowa and New Hampshire, he will be well on his way to uniting fiscal, national security, and social conservatives.

Major Strengths. Call it luck, good timing, or stellar political instincts—but whatever it is, Perry has it. He has never lost a campaign, even though on a couple of occasions he wasn’t favored to win. Chris Bell, a former congressman who had the misfortune of competing against Perry for the governorship, says:

He’s the luckiest politician that ever walked the face of the Earth. Luck has a lot to do with success in politics—good timing, right circumstances, all play in to the likelihood of success and he has been very opportunistic throughout the past couple of decades and it has served him well.

Ted Delisi, a Perry adviser and Republican consultant, adds that his boss has often had the advantage of being “vastly underestimated” at the start of his campaigns. He also thinks that Perry has an important gift that many other politicians lack:

He has a pretty good sense of what the average voter cares about.

During his nearly eleven yearsas Texas’s governor, Perry has developed a reputation as a fearless legislative fighter. The Texas state constitution created a weak governorship. Perry, however, has “reinvented the office as a power center.” At a time when many Americans believe that the United States lacks strong leadership and say that President Obama’s conciliatory style of governing has failed, Perry’s hard-line, take-no-prisoners attitude toward politics may appeal to voters. Paul Burka explains:

Perry is a hard man. He is the kind of politician who would rather be feared than loved—or respected. And he has gotten his wish. Perry does not have many friends in the ­Legislature.

Perry’s accomplishments in office will help him make the case for his leadership skills. In particular, Perry will be able to tout Texas’s record in job creation. The Lone Star state has generated 37 percent of all new jobs in the United States since 2009. You can bet that Perry will take credit for that success.

Major Weaknesses. As with other candidates who excite the Republican base, Perry’s red-meat politics could undermine his efforts to court more moderate voters. Newsweekexplains:

What remains to be seen is whether voters are ready to reward [candidates] for their conservatism—or whether they’re more comfortable sticking closer to the center of the spectrum.

Perry will also test the country’s willingness to give another Texan governor a chance to sit in the White House. Perry served for a year as Bush’s lieutenant governor and succeeded him as governor. So Democrats will have plenty of photos of the two together to use in negative ads should Perry win the GOP nomination. They also have Perry saying back in 2000 that “you are not going to see a great philosophical difference between Rick Perry and George Bush.”

While the Texas economy is generating jobs, the state currently faces a $4.3 billion deficit. More problems are looming on the horizon. State budget revenues are projected to fall by 2.9 percent over the next two years to $72.2 billion. Simply maintaining the current level of state services over the next two years is projected to cost $99 billion. Making up that $27 billion shortfall will be painful, especially given that tax increases aren’t likely to be part of the solution.

Perry’s refusal to embrace restrictive immigration laws may help him in a general election but it could hurt him in the race for the GOP nomination. Republican critics of Perry’s positions on immigration have already begun complaining. They note that Numbers USA, a group that pushes for more restrictive immigration laws, gives Perry a “D-” on immigration. In a 2010 poll, Gallup found that 54 percent of Republicans want to see immigration decrease.

We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we’re a pretty independent lot to boot.

That’s the beauty of the system our founding fathers devised when they ratified the 10th amendment to the Constitution, ensuring states had the freedom to do things their own way and the flexibility to meet their challenges in whichever fashion works best for them.

Governor Perry must immediately take the leadership in economy and foreign policy.
Must display his unity as an American not as a party loyalist.
Use state of Texas as a great example of economies prosperity and growth.

Posted by JimAugust 15, 2011 at 3:17 pm

This article does not discuss Perry’s controversial role in executions.

Posted by LarryAugust 15, 2011 at 4:26 pm

It also doesn’t mention the extreme radical nature of his christian beliefs.

Posted by kilgore troutAugust 15, 2011 at 7:02 pm

Nor does the article take into account what keeping taxes low low low produces: a state that is in the bottom 10 in practically every imaginable rating.

Posted by mark oholendtAugust 27, 2011 at 9:12 am

Anyone who thinks Rick Perry has a great economic record in Texas does not have their facts straight. Texas has a balanced budget by law and Perry had nothing to do with that.

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